The overall goal of this NIA P30 Research and Development Center grant is to provide administrative infrastructure, pilot project support, faculty development resources, resources for research networking, external research support resources, and statistical development for the Center for Demographic Studies research program on aging and its associated pre- and post-doctoral training programs. This support is not only to maintain the activities of the larger portfolio of NIA grants and contracts currently ongoing at the Center for Demographic Studies but also to define direction as to new areas of science to CDS investigators. For example, the prior P20 grant helped us develop components of the 1999 NLTCS which assessed genetic determinants of disease and aging. This function (or program development and evolution) will be promoted by Core A advisory groups, Core B pilot projects, Core C scientific collaborator networks, and the Core E statistical development group. Core D will help extend those innovations to other NIA investigators not at Duke or formally in one of its networking systems. Thus, the P30 Center project will both support current research and help plan future research directions and make the results of those activities more broadly available. Such program development would not be possible without the specialized infrastructure offered by the P30 Center. The areas promoted in the P30 Center include biodemography, medical demography, studies of the oldest-old population, genetics of aging and chronic diseases, long-term care, and caregiver services, cost of illness, health and functional status forecasting, studies of women's health among others (see Introduction).